51. To guard this favored spot, and to protect its soil from the polluting footstep of the hated Spaniard, mariners went forth to do or die. It was now, in the moment of supreme peril, that the courage, hardihood, and skill of England's great navigators gained in battle with the elements in the unknown seas of the North and West, and in many a strife against fearful odds with their Spanish foes, were found to be equal to the occasion and sufficient to insure the safety of their country. 52. On Sunday morning, July 21st, the English ships commenced their attacks upon their unwieldy antagonists. "The Spanish ships," says Motley, "seemed arrayed for a pageant in honor of a victory won. Arranged in the form of a crescent whose horns were seven miles asunder, those gilded towers and floating castles, with their brilliant standards and martial music, bore slowly up the Channel. The admiral, the 'Golden Duke,' stood in his private shot-proof tower, on the deck of his great galleon, the Saint Martin, surrounded by guards of infantry and captains of cavalry, no better acquainted than himself with naval tactics. 53. "And just as the gaddy hovers about and stings the horse, which is all unable to escape from its tiny enemy; so round the heavy galleons and unwieldy ships of Spain the light English vessels, commanded by able and experienced seamen, hovered with the utmost freedom. Their superior tactics soon obtained the advantage of the wind, enabling them at intervals to cannonade their enemies with great effect, while they themselves escaped out of range at pleasure, and easily avoided the tremendous discharge of the Spanish ordnance. 54. "In vain the Golden Duke attempted to bring on a general engagement. Howard and Drake were well aware that in a ship-to-ship fight the strongest would necessarily conquer, and that their only hope of success lay in keeping close upon the enemy's flanks, or following at his heels, cutting off a stray galleon, making a dash into his ill-managed squadrons, and so gradually but surely reducing his strength, until they could venture to give him battle on more equal terms." 55. "The Armada," Mr. Fronde says, "made sail and attempted to close. To Medina Sidonia's extreme astonishment, it seemed at the pleasure of the English to leave him or allow him to approach them as they chose. The high-towered, broad-bowed galleons moved like Thames barges piled with hay, while the sharp, low English ships sailed at near two feet to the Spaniards' one and shot away, as if by magic, in the eye of the wind. It was as if a modern steam fleet was engaged with a squadron of the old-fashioned sailing vessels, choosing their own distance, and fighting or not fighting, as suited their convenience.